[iDC] Deinstitutionalizing education

[Ismael Peña-López]

Dear Jodi, list,


Does saying, "well, people can teach themselves online!" provide further
> justification for the neoliberal dismantling of public education?
>


That is a very interesting point and, at first sight, it looks like a good
guess.

Plenty of evidence, though, just points to the opposite way. I'll try and
provide the argument and two examples: one in Uruguay and the other one
Europe (as a whole).

The effect of ICTs and all the process of digitizing information and
communications does not make things absolutely easier, but actually shifts
the stress from the "hardware" to the "software". In other words, we freed
walls, paper and people from being the recipients for information. This
means that (ideally) now everybody can access any kind of content any kind
of person online.

The problem then is how to use all this much power to process information
efficiently and use it effectively. The stress is now in processing, not in
accessing. And this is where curation, guidance, mentorship... come more
needed than ever.

In a very simple example, we made ancient Egypt culture available to every
Briton by sending large amounts of archaeological remains to London. But we
now need a British Museum and all their scientists and guides to lead us
through their halls.

There effectively is a much lesser need for lecturing, and a much higher
need for teaching.

The first example is Proyecto Ceibal (http://ceibal.edu.uy/ and an English
blog, outdated, but with interesting info http://olpc-ceibal.blogspot.com/),
the 1-to-1 laptop project in Uruguay that is using OPLC's XO computers.
Unlike most other OPLC projects, Proyecto Ceibal began at the community
level by firstly addressing the human factor. The laptop that enabled
"people [to] teach themselves online" actually required a huge effort in
community building, training for trainers, open educational resources
creation and many other sub-projects to "accompany" the learner in their
learning paths.

The second example is the new European Higher Education Area (EHEA), also
known as the Bologna Process (
http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/highereducation/EHEA2010/BolognaPedestrians_en.aspand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_process). To make a (very) long story
short, the Bologna Process aims at (1) establishing a common Higher
Education system in Europe that fosters mobility (of students and
professionals) and (2) shift a good amount of learning workload to the
student, by decreasing lectures and increasing seminars and work at home and
libraries (please do excuse me for this rough simplification).

Though the Internet is never mentioned (not that I remember at least) it is
obvious that it is present in everyone's minds. Indeed, since the process
began many many many European universities have set up online learning
platforms to support this shift from the teacher to the student, by
providing digital resources, establishing new channels of communication with
the teacher and amongst students, etc.

Now, to the point. Unlike what many (especially within the political sphere)
expected about cost reduction of public education, what we are actually
witnessing is (a) a shift of costs and (b) in the very short term, an
increase of costs due to the setting up of platforms and their contents and
the adaptation of the traditional system.

Does this contradict what was said in the previous message? I guess not. On
the one hand, because we are not taking into account the cost of "hardware"
(build new walls, print new paper, move teachers over the territory), which
in urban areas is already deployed, but not in rural/poorer ones. On the
other hand, because sometimes it is a matter of this-or-nothing, that is,
the costs of one of the options are infinite.

Happy week end for everyone from a not-very-sunny-today Barcelona :)

i.

--
Ismael Peña-López
Department of Law and Political Science
Open University of Catalonia

http://ictlogy.net
Av. Tibidabo 39-43
08035 Barcelona
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